Thursday, September 27, 2007

During last night’s debate among the Democratic Presidential candidates, the question was put forward to Sen. Clinton regarding the mysterious Israeli airstrike in Syria that has reportedly involved a secret nuclear facility. Sen. Clinton’s tone, demeanor and delivery noticeably changed as she discussed what happened and from reading her body language it is obvious she has been let in on a certain amount of confidential information regarding the strike. The rest of us, meaning the rest of the world, is operating in a vacuum on this story. The silence is actually beginning to draw attention to itself.

Coupled with this event is the recent oddness of missing billionaire aviator Steve Fossett and the incredible story regarding the possibility that nuclear-armed Tomahawk cruise missiles have been moved in a manner that circumvents the control procedures for maintaining custody of nuclear weapons. Is there a connection between all or some of these recent events? Was the attack on the Syrian facility a component of a larger operation in which Iran was to have been attacked as well? Is the Fossett story cover or a sign of a much larger story?

First of all, we are operating with a certain ammount of unknowns for all three of these stories. The most open of the stories being the Fossett search. This hasn’t captured the imagination of the American public for a simple reason; we have already been desensitized to any missing aviator/person of wealth/under strange circumstances stories. Our obsession with missing women and children has also taken the interest level down a notch for Fossett. The McCann story updates alone are enough to push the Fossett story aside.

The areas that Fossett overflew are near quite a few airbases of extreme sensitivity to the US Military. The areas are remote with hidden canyons and areas where persons could operate in a clandestine mode if they wanted. Is it possible that Fossett’s plane was forced down or taken down out of concern that he may have observed something occurring on the ground?

Details, including timelines for the Minot-Barksdale incident are virtually impossible to find via mass media reports. The most curious aspect and one that I believe is being overlooked is the supposed 10 hour timeframe that the B-52 sat on the Barksdale tarmac, loaded with a dozen Tomahawks, half of which were armed with a nuclear payload. Could this 10-hour timeframe actually be cover for a trip from Minot southwest toward the Nevada-California border, followed by a quick eastern flight to the base in Shreveport?

Rumor and theories get started because of news blackouts, silence, stonewalling and disinfo like we are seeing in varying degrees with all three of these stories. The trick in trying to understand these stories and trying to find out if they are interconnected is to ask basic questions, the old Five W’s of reporting. Who? What? When? Where? Why? If answers cannot be found by following those guidelines and using them in follow-up questions it is then obvious that there is a problem with the official story.

The most curious aspect of the Fossett disappearance, in my mind, is the side story that Google released recent satellite images of an area that Fossett may have been in at the time of his disappearance and allowed users of Google Earth to assist in the search for the aviator. Information, in any investigation is crucial. What is most important in an investigation is not the quantity of the leads but the management of that information. Any time there is a massive flood of “tips” from the public in an investigation there is an added chance that the investigation will go in the wrong direction simply because the investigative team will be swamped with an avalanche of info.

Was this an example of a disinfo campaign or an attempt to overwhelm the investigative team so a covert operation could be run out in the open? The covert operation being the cleanup or removal of debris from an incident involving the Fossett plane.

In the case of the Tomahawks situation the most troubling aspects are the when and why of the matter. Timelines cannot be established without hitting odd inconsistencies. For example, the Air Force states that the plane sat, unguarded and open for more than 10 hours at Barksdale while senior officers attempted to establish whether or not nukes were sitting on the tarmac. An hour I can understand, but a 10-hour window is not reasonable. The answers for why this was the case is not satisfactory and leads us to question if this 10-hour window is truthful.

Why pilots flew from North Dakota to Louisiana, almost the entire longitudinal length of the contiguous United States, without knowing they were carrying live nuclear weapons and why the weapons officers allowed this to happen fly completely in the face of the accepted and required procedures for the storage, handling and release of weapons from the nuclear stockpile. This isn’t like a person making a mistake at the grocery store and picking up a low-fat version of some food product instead of the regular version.

The nukes were released from the stockpile for a specific reason. Officers, who have spent most if not all of their careers, certified in the world of tactical nuclear weapons, authorized this release and were satisfied that their orders were correct. For the last 39 years there has been a ban on flying nuclear weapons on combat aircraft and the only acceptable means of transporting nukes by air has been through specially built transport planes. Nuclear weapons are not marked like conventional weapons. All weapons are marked and color coded in a manner so there is absolutely no way of mistaking whether a weapon is live, inert, conventional, chemical, biological or radiological in nature.

In short, there could have been no mistake involved, starting with the lowliest E-1, E-2 or E-3 all the way up the chain of command. The missiles were intentionally released from the stockpile, loaded onto the B-52 and flown off the Minot Air Force Base. What became of them, where they went, when they arrived, who took possession of them and why this was done is not known to us but we can say without reason that the Air Force’s explanation for the who, what, when, where and why this happened neither makes sense or is reasonable.

This leads us back to the action in Syria. Our elected officials in America respond with vague answers that allude to absolute secrecy when questions are asked. Israel is keeping their mouths shut. Syria is keeping itself quiet. No one wants to talk about it. One thing that has come out is the legendary Israeli General Staff’s Reconnaissance Unit, aka Sayeret Matkal, may have taken nuclear materials out of the location before the air attack occured, disguised as members of the Syrian Army.

Why the deafening silence over this action? Did a nuclear accident occur during the ground raid or the air attack? If a nuclear accident did occur it is safe to say that remote monitoring stations would have detected the presence of radiation, so I think it’s safe to say that an accidental release of radiation from the air attack did not occur. It would also be foolish to attack the facility, with the fuel rods present, and not make an effort to remove them from the site. Even if they were buried under tons of debris they would still be present and make a tempting prize for anyone willing to remove them. Assuming they did remove nuclear materials from the site, does this mean they removed bundles of fuel rods from the site? Wouldn’t activity of this nature have drawn massive amounts of attention at the site? It certainly would have.

Bombing the site, with the fuel rods present, would have caused a release of radioactive materials, which would have been detected; therefore it is safe to assume that the Israelis did in fact remove the fuel rods before the airstrike since no release of radioactive materials has been observed. Other than slaughtering the entire group of people present at the work site, there is no way they could have removed bundles of fuel rods for a nuclear reactor without drawing a massive amount of attention. You couldn’t walk onto a job site anywhere in the world and simply commandeer a crane and steal a pile of rebar without a large group of workers, foremen, supervisors and project managers noticing and raising hell. It's safe to assume that a group of commandos couldn't remove fuel rods without generating a similar reaction from witnesses.

Something ominous has happened in Syria, something so serious and terrifying that government officials are afraid to talk about it. Something ominous has also happened to the American nuclear stockpile, something so serious and terrifying that government officials have created a cover story that is easily seen through as a lie, which foretells that it was created in haste, because they are afraid to tell us the truth. Something has also happened to Steve Fossett. Was he collateral damage, a pain in the ass innocent bystander who saw too much, or did he simply take one too many flights and the roulette wheel of statistics finally caught up with him when he bet red instead of putting all the chips on black?